“Placing the blame or judgment on someone else leaves you powerless to change your experience.” Byron Katie
I recently discovered that somebody I loved and trusted lied to me in unimaginable ways. When such things happen, it takes time to recover and heal ourselves. In many ways I feel a victim, enraged and hurt at the injustice, sure that I did nothing to the person to deserve this. It is not an empowering feeling. It means letting the person have power over me and over how I feel about life, creating paralysis.
I am recovering, however. I have shifted my perspective to a point where I have changed the story of being victim of the evils of the world to the story of perseverance and strength. Of cause there are times I shift back …but at least I will be aware that I do. It is an iterative process.
I think most of us, when we go through such experiences, know where we need to be, when we think about it objectively. Pain creates a kind of addiction to stay in it, to absolve ourselves from the responsibility to move out of it. The more we stay in it, the more the blame perspective may take over our entire thinking and our ways of viewing the world.
When we blame other people or situations, we lose power. Others may be at fault, or we may have contributed to the situation in small or big ways. The situation or the circumstances may be at fault, possibly an entire organization or culture. But to blame others for our suffering does not provide for the way forward. We are basically not helping ourselves. It keeps us in a negative space, blinding us of the options we have, of our space for influencing and of opportunities arising. When we blame others we create a pessimistic view of the world which reduces our energy to find solutions.
When we stop blaming and take responsibility, for what has happened or for how we think about the situation, we become free and release energy for action. Whoever did something to us, is in their own space, unlikely to hurt if we blame them or even learn from it. They will have to learn from life in their own way. It is their responsibility, not ours.
When we are leaders, not blaming does not mean not acting on wrong doing. It just means not getting stuck in laying responsibility on others. When we blame, we may not be able to forge the way forward on issues that need to be resolved. Our perspective may be so focused on who did something wrong that we miss out on the wider dynamic of a situation. We may miss out on listening, on being curious, on using our roles as facilitators to lead people through challenges and provide a motivating vision. As we harbor feelings of blame, we may create an environment of negativity around us which may demotivate staff from looking at issues from a perspective of possibility. We may lose access to our own resourcefulness and block others from being resourceful.
It is possible to let go of blame, even if we hold responsibility in a leadership role and feel oppressed by the weight of that responsibility. Letting go of blame is a perspective change. It means looking at the situation from the perspective of solutions, from the perspective of love.
Useful Reference: Katie, B. (2002). Loving What Is, New York, NY: Three Rivers Press